The Internet of Things holds great promise for bringing people a richer, more-connected world. For example, machines can report a malfunction and request service, a consumable item can announce when a replacement needs to be purchased, and so forth. Two technological developments have paved the way for the Internet of Things. First, the number of available Internet addresses has dramatically increased with the adoption of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). IPv6 is the latest protocol defining how electronic devices identify, locate, and communicate with other electronic devices on the Internet. With IPv6, there are now enough Internet addresses to assign each item manufactured by humans an individual unique Internet address. Second, the seemingly inexorable reduction in size and cost of electronic circuitry continues. Computer processing circuits, memory chips, wireless communication units, sensors, etc. have become sufficiently small and inexpensive to enable deployment with many different kinds of products, including consumable and disposable ones.
One of the asserted benefits of the Internet of Things is that the products that people use every day can be in communication with the cloud. A given product can access a manufacturer's servers for diagnostic help or can contact a retailer's website to place a reorder. This ability with the Internet of Things to communicate directly with the cloud enables individual products to have access to a wealth of information and commerce opportunities.
To facilitate communication between products and the cloud, a standardized protocol may be adopted for the Internet of Things. Each product is enabled to communicate through a standard protocol to reduce the complexity of Internet of Things objects and to simplify an exchange of information. This approach, although providing a streamlined design and production process for Internet of Things objects, implicitly limits some of the potential capabilities of a richer, more-connected world.